Chapter 40
ANNIE
Dread moved forward.
“Let’s make this fun,” he said, his voice soft with anticipation. “Let’s play a little game.” The shadows at his feet rose higher, coiling around his legs like eager pets.
“Hide and seek,” he whispered. “I’ll give you a five-minute head start. Run anywhere in this little mock city. Hide wherever you want.” His eyes flared brighter. “And when I find you, and I will find you, I’m going to take a little piece of you. Just a little one. Then we’ll play again.”
Despite the numbness that had fallen over me, I felt sick. He was a cat playing with a mouse until there was nothing left but bloody scraps.
“Run.”
I bolted before the word fully registered. The mock city stretched before me, empty buildings, fake storefronts, all designed for Supers to practice urban combat. Now it was my killing ground.
My feet pounded against the pavement as I darted between buildings, lungs already burning.
I ducked into an alley, pressing my back against cold brick. The power dampener cuff felt impossibly heavy on my wrist and fucking useless.
Think, Annie. Think.
But all I could think was: Cipher gave me to this monster. He had handed me over to be butchered.
A shadow shifted at the alley entrance and I choked back a sob as I pressed my back against the wall, trying to make myself smaller.
The shadows moved. Shifted. Breathed.
“Annie...” Dread’s voice echoed through the Crucible. “Come out, come out, wherever you are. Your abilities are already fractured, Annie. Just a little more pressure...” His voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. “And you’ll break so beautifully.”
The wall beside me exploded in a shower of shattered bricks and dust. I threw myself forward, stumbling. There was no time for pain or fear.
My lungs burned as I sprinted through pitch blackness, arms outstretched to avoid collisions. Every footfall sent shockwaves of pain up my leg. I couldn’t see where I was going. I couldn’t plan, couldn’t strategize. Just run. Keep moving.
“I love when they run,” Dread called out, his voice lilting. “It makes the hunt so much more satisfying.”
My hand brushed against what felt like a door frame. I ducked inside, thinking it must be a small supply closet. I tried to quiet my breathing as I listened for footsteps.
Silence.
For ten glorious seconds, I allowed myself to believe I’d lost him. I closed my eyes, savoring the momentary reprieve. Maybe I could wait him out. Maybe he’d move to another section of the Crucible.
Another explosion of concrete and debris rocked the floor beneath me. I stumbled out of the small room as I heard the ceiling crumble down where I had been.
I began running again and burst into an open area, moonlight streaming through the dome above.
Dread materialized out of the shadows and clamped a hand around my throat, lifting me off my feet.
“Found you.” He slammed me against a wall, my head cracking against concrete. Stars exploded behind my eyes as he released my throat, letting me slump to the ground.
“That was fun,” he said, towering over me. “But not as fun as what comes next.”
I blinked away tears, forcing myself to focus. Moonlight illuminated his silhouette as he reached into his jacket and pulled out a long, curved knife. The blade caught the silvery light.
“What piece of you should I take first?” He crouched before me, bringing the knife to my face.
His eyes were bright coals in the low light.
“An ear? A finger? Maybe a pretty blue eye?” He tilted his head.
“Or do I kill you with a thousand cuts? Maybe that would be better.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “You’d survive much longer that way.”
He tapped the knife against his chin, contemplating. “So many options.” Without warning, he flicked his wrist. Pain bloomed across my cheek as the blade sliced through skin. I cried out, warm blood trickling down my face.
“There’s that lovely sound.” Dread leaned closer, examining his handiwork. “Maybe we’ll do a little from column A, a little from column B.” He traced the flat of the blade down my jawline. “That way you won’t know what to expect.”
He pressed the knife against my collarbone, not quite hard enough to break the skin. Then he stepped back and smiled. It was a terrible, empty thing that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Run,” he crooned.
I scrambled to my feet and ran. The moonlight faded behind me as I plunged deeper into the complex.
“That’s it,” Dread’s voice echoed. “Feed that fear.”
I ducked around a corner and his hand snagged in my hair, yanking me backward. I crashed to the ground, the impact knocking the wind from my lungs. Before I recovered, his weight pressed down on me, pinning me.
“Faster this time,” he said, sounding almost disappointed. “You’re making this too easy. Let’s try something different,” he whispered.
A pressure built against my temples as his power pushed against my mind.
“Interesting,” Dread murmured, his expression shifting from sadistic pleasure to genuine curiosity.
“You’re still keeping me out.” The pressure intensified.
My head felt like it might split open, but whatever sort of resistance my fractured abilities gave me held.
Not perfect, not whole, but enough. Just enough.
Dread sighed. “I’ll have to break you the old-fashioned way,” he said, reaching for his knife again.
I thrashed beneath him, but he was too strong. The knife flashed in the darkness, and I felt the cold metal against my collarbone, then the sharp tug as he sliced through my sweater. The blade traveled downward, parting the fabric.
“Let’s leave our mark, shall we?” The knife bit into my skin, carving a line down my stomach. I clenched my teeth against the pain, refusing to scream. Warm blood trickled down my sides.
“Such control,” he murmured. “Let’s see how long that lasts.”
The blade moved higher and a sharp pain exploded across my breast. I couldn’t stop my scream this time.
“Oops,” Dread said, his voice dripping with false concern. “I slipped.”
Tears welled in my eyes, but I blinked them back. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. I wouldn’t break.
He finally stood and I gasped, sucking in air as my lungs expanded fully for the first time in minutes.
“Run,” he said, stepping back and gesturing toward the darkness with his bloodied knife.
I clutched my torn sweater closed with one hand and launched myself forward.
Blood trickled down my stomach from the shallow cut, warm and sticky against my skin. Behind me, I heard Dread’s slow footsteps. He was savoring the chase.
I rounded a corner and stumbled forward into a larger space. Faint light filtered in from somewhere above, illuminating the edges of a mock plaza. Concrete benches and a dried-up fountain stood in the center.
I limped toward the far side, hoping to find an exit, a window, anything—
Shadows closed around my ankle, yanking backward. I crashed to the ground and Dread flipped me onto my back, straddling me and pinning me down once more.
“That was pathetic,” he said, shaking his head in disappointment. “I expected more from Havoc’s pet.”
The knife appeared in his hand again. I wasn’t going to survive this. No one knew where I was. No one was coming.
I was going to die here.
Unless I used the one thing I spent my entire life trying to hide.
My Warden abilities were broken. Unpredictable. I had to make direct physical contact to cut off his powers, and doing so would siphon part of them into me. Shadow manipulation. Fear. Dread’s poison running through my veins alongside Halcyon’s.
I just needed to touch his bare skin for a second. Just one second to buy myself time.
I thrust my hand upward and aimed my palm straight for his face.
I never even got close.
Dread possessed the unnatural reflexes of a Trueborn monster. His hand shot out and intercepted my arm in midair. His fingers clamped down on my forearm and he smiled down at me. He twisted his grip with a sharp wrench.
A loud crack echoed through the abandoned plaza and a blinding spike of pain shot up my arm. I screamed as the bone broke and squeezed my eyes shut against the sudden wave of nausea.
Dread let my broken arm drop against the concrete and I screamed again. I think I blacked out for a few seconds from the pain.
“Naughty,” he whispered. He leaned closer until I could feel the cold emanating from his skin. “You really should learn to behave, Warden. Try to touch me again and I will do something far worse than snap a little bone.”
He grabbed the wrist of my unbroken arm and forced it above my head. The knife hovered over my splayed fingers as he pried them apart, one by one.
“I think I’ll take a souvenir this time,” he said, his voice soft with anticipation. “But which one should I start with? The pinky seems traditional, but I’ve always been partial to index fingers myself.”
The cold metal of the blade pressed against the base of my index finger.
I tried to trap my scream behind clenched teeth as I felt the pressure building as he prepared to cut.
The surrounding shadows pulsed, growing darker, more substantial.
The cold tendrils brushed against my skin like ghostly caresses.
A blur of movement shot through the air, a darker shape against the night and it slammed into Dread. The impact was so violent I felt the shockwave against my skin as both bodies careened sideways, crashing straight through the wall of a mock building.
For one breathtaking moment, Dread’s concentration broke. The unnatural shadows flickered and vanished, leaving only normal darkness behind. Moonlight suddenly seemed bright as day.
I gasped, sucking in air. My mind couldn’t process what had just happened. One second Dread was there, knife poised to carve pieces from me, the next, he was gone, ripped away by some unseen force.
Dust particles danced in the moonlight, the only evidence that anything had happened at all. I pushed myself up on my one good arm and cradled the other to me as carefully as I could.